About The Center

The Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice at the Drexel University School of Public Health (Center) works to promote health, nonviolence and social justice through trauma informed practice, research, professional development, and advocacy for policy change. The Center was founded in 2008 with initial support from the Thomas Scattergood Foundation with the goal to change the conversation about violence away from a criminal justice perspective and toward a trauma-informed public health perspective. The flagship program of the Center is Healing Hurt People, an innovative, trauma informed, hospital based intervention designed to heal the wounds of trauma in young victims of urban violence. This effort, which has been continuously funded by the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services since 2007, has been replicated across Philadelphia as well as in Portland OR and Chicago IL.